


After

by not_hawkguy



Category: L.A. By Night (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, Blood, Blood Drinking, Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-09
Updated: 2020-11-09
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:41:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27463603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/not_hawkguy/pseuds/not_hawkguy
Summary: *spoilers for season 4, episode 8 and epilogue 2*After the events in the junkyard, X has a lot to think about, whether he wants to or not.
Relationships: Jasper Heartwood & X
Comments: 6
Kudos: 15





	After

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so, first LA by Night fanfic. I had a lot of feelings after season four, specifically about X. So, here we are. I love this character so much, and I really enjoyed trying to get into his head. Hope y'all enjoy, too.

The memory replayed in his mind.

The taste of her vitae, that was real. The sound of her scream, real. The image he saw, what he would do – what he did – to her, was that real? No, he’d watched her run. She’d escaped the monster. The big, bad wolf.

“Hey.”

X jumped as the voice pulled him back into the present. Jasper stood beside him on the side of the LA River, his hood shielding his face from the light of the moon and obscuring whatever expression he wore in shadow.

“You okay?” he asked.

They had stopped walking. X didn’t remember stopping, but he didn’t really remember starting, either. They were at the junkyard, and then they left. But then, they were back again? No, that was just in his mind. But that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. Or wouldn’t happen.

“X?”

X shook his head. “I’m sorry.” Had he said it three times yet? He needed it to be true. “I’m sorry.”

“I know. It’s okay.” Jasper looked ahead. “We need to keep going. We don’t have long before sunrise.”

X nodded, and the two continued forward in silence. The hum of cars had disappeared as they’d gained distance from the freeway, and any animals that may have made noise knew to keep their distance. Not even birds flew overhead or perched on wires. But birds didn’t really come out at night, anyway. Night was for the bats. And elephants. 

X’s mind didn’t allow the night to be as quiet as it wanted to be. The strange voices that were always there chattered away, some in whispers, some in shouts. He’d gotten good at ignoring them over the years, tuning them out in favor of the things that were more likely to be real. But it didn’t seem to matter whether he’d gotten good at something or not tonight. The control he’d worked so hard to maintain had vanished the moment he’d heard her name.

Her.

Her voice wasn’t among the crowd now. He’d silenced it, sated it with the dog’s blood. But she always came back. It was just a matter of time.

He needed more. He needed to make sure she’d stay away. He needed the power to make her stay away.

“You know,” Jasper said, breaking through the silence and the voices, “if you want, we can talk about what happened.”

X shook his head. He didn’t want to talk about it. He couldn’t.

“Okay. That’s fine. Just…” Jasper paused, considering his words. “She’ll be okay. Tonight was… a lot, but Annabelle—”

“Shh!” X waved his hands in front of his face. He couldn’t hear that name. Couldn’t think of it. He couldn’t think of _her_ as _her._

The memory came again. His fangs were in her throat. He could taste her fear, and he could taste her power, that power that he needed so badly, that he drank down so desperately. The spark of the resistance. It was his to take.

He’d seen it so long ago, before any of it, before he could really know what the vision was about. He never thought he’d be so close to the Brujah, to care for her like he did. A revolution? Why would he be anywhere near that? He’d almost forgotten about it by the time he met her. And even then, it couldn’t have been her. She was just a baby.

But then she was more. Then, she was strong. She punched the cougar. She helped kill the harpy. She rallied the Kindred of Los Angeles to her cause, to her revolution, her resistance. And he was there for all of it. And he knew. He knew that she was more than just his friend who happened to be a Brujah. She didn’t _happen_ to be anything. 

She’d told him she would help him. She just didn’t know what promise she was making.

Now, she was crying, crimson tears running down her cheeks and falling onto his. She grabbed his arm as he fed. He’d told her so many times.

“Don’t touch me!”

Jasper let go of X’s arm. “Okay. Sorry. I just— I need you to step back for a second.”

He and X had arrived at an access cover, a large, round door embedded into the concrete embankment. They stood in the shallow water running through the canal now, having descended a set of stairs that X could see behind them.

“X.” Jasper held onto the handles on either side of the door and stared at X. He tilted his head backward, motioning for X to move in that direction.

X did as he was told, and Jasper opened the door. Warm light spilled out from inside, and they stepped through the door into a short hallway. Lightbulbs buzzed overhead, dotting the ceiling before reaching a room on the other end of the hall.

Jasper closed the door, locked it, and sighed. “Okay,” he whispered. Then, facing X, he said, “So, this is where I live.” A small smile twisted the corner of his mouth. “I know you’ve been wanting to see it for a while.”

X walked down the hallway and into the room ahead. Generic furniture filled it. A thin layer of dust covered its surfaces. There was nothing that said anything about the person who lived in it or even that a person lived in it at all. There was nothing of Jasper. X had expected more.

He had thought there might be a wall of knives or a cool superhero suit display case for his black hoodies. Maybe he’d kept the stake that the Camarilla stuck through him and mounted it on the wall or something. That seemed like something he’d do. He could make the backing look like the Hollywood sign! Maybe that was too morbid. But morbid or not, there was nothing to give the place character, nothing to give it a life.

“It’s dead,” X said.

Jasper walked up beside him, an inquisitive look on his face. “Right. It’s… pretty quiet in here. I guess. Um—” He looked toward the left side of the room, where a closed door stood, then nodded. “You’re welcome to look around if you want. The library’s over there.” He pointed to an archway on the right side of the room. Then, he indicated the door on the left. “You… probably shouldn’t go through that door. That—” He laughed under his breath and quietly, almost to himself, said, “That probably wouldn’t go well.” 

X headed into the library. A single table and two chairs sat in its center, surrounded by massive, full bookcases that lined the circular room. A few books lay on the table, along with a single, red rose.

This room spoke of Jasper. It spoke of his thirst for knowledge, his pursuance of something more. X felt like he could understand that. Books, stories, knowledge, were almost like music. They were eternal.

All sorts of books lined the shelves. New, old, _very_ old. History, geography, titles in languages that X didn’t know. The occult, another facet of Jasper. His love for magic, and for a certain practitioner thereof. X felt a pang of guilt. He’d told Eva to go. He’d thought it was the right thing, but Jasper had been so sad. He still was.

Eva had left, which was probably bad. And the Brujah had left, which was both bad and good. And everything had changed from the way it was. That just was what it was.

“Not everything lasts forever,” X said.

Jasper’s eyes were locked on the rose. A few of its petals lay on the table, dark and shriveled.

“No,” he said, “nothing really does.” Jasper cleared his throat a couple of times. “Well. You’re welcome to the books if you want to stay in here, or there’s a TV in the living room. It’s been a while since we watched _House Hunters_ together, right? We could do that.” He smiled half-heartedly, but quickly dropped it when X didn’t acknowledge him.

Instead, X surveyed the books. People said that knowledge is power. Maybe the books could help him. But he knew that wasn’t really what he needed. He knew what he needed.

Jasper looked over his shoulder to the closed door. “I’ll… I’ll be right back, okay? There’s something I need to do.”

He waited a moment, looking back at X, then turned and headed for the door. Another memory, a realization, struck X. Victor had said it before, that one time at the college. Jasper had what he needed.

X turned around. “You put people in cages.”

Jasper stopped in his tracks, then slowly faced X. “You… didn’t forget about that. Great.” He sighed. “Yeah. I do. Well, technically—”

“I need one.”

“You need—”

“A person.”

“You need a person. One of the people that I put in a cage. Okay. Um—”

“I need their power.”

Jasper raised his eyebrows. “Ah. Okay. I see. The people I take, they’re not really… people. They’re like us. Kindred.”

X’s eyes lit up. That was even better. “What flavor?”

“What— Oh. What flavor.” Jasper looked back toward the door, frowning. He waited a long moment before speaking again. “They’re normally like me.”

X stared past Jasper, his gaze fixed on the closed door, picturing what – who – might lie behind it. He could almost taste it on his tongue, not that he knew what Nosferatu vitae tasted like. He imagined that it probably wasn’t very good, but then again, the Gangrel didn’t taste anything like dog. What had he thought the Brujah would taste like? Leather jackets? She hadn’t tasted anything like that.

“Look,” Jasper said slowly, “maybe it’d be best if we just left that alone for now. We’ll find you something tomorrow night, okay?”

X’s mouth twisted and his head cocked to the side, a frustrated twitch. Jasper was trying to be nice, but he didn’t understand. He didn’t understand that he _needed_ this, that he didn’t have a choice.

“I had to do it!” X blurted out. “I had to do it. I had to do it.”

“You— What did you have to do?” Jasper asked, his eyebrows knitted.

“It was the way it always was, the way it always had to be. I saw it before everything. I can’t change it.”

“You saw it. A vision. What exactly did you see?” Jasper’s eyes searched X’s face, looking for answers.

“I need the Brujah. I need her power if I want to be free.”

Jasper’s face fell, and he looked away, nodding slowly. “Oh. I… understand.” After a moment, he looked back to X. “You had a vision of feeding on… the Brujah. You thought that it would make you stronger.”

“I can’t do it by myself. I can’t get rid of her. But if it was the Brujah instead of me, she could do it! _She_ would be dead, and I would be free!”

“Hey,” Jasper said. “Listen to me.” He raised his hands and, when X didn’t stop him, placed them on X’s shoulders. “You’re not by yourself. _I_ will help you. If you want to go after her tomorrow, we can do it. If you want to plan, we can plan. I’m supporting _you_.”

X nodded as fresh, red tears ran over the older, dried streaks on his face. He didn’t know he’d been crying. There was no b.s. between him and Jasper. If he told him something, he’d trust him. And X trusted that Jasper would help him. 

After a moment, Jasper’s eyes closed, and he sighed and dropped his hands from X’s shoulders. He pulled out his phone and checked it. “Sunrise is in a few minutes. We’ll talk about this tomorrow. I promise.”

X could feel it, the day sleep coming on. His body felt heavy, like it was already reverting back to a corpse. “Okay,” he said. “Tomorrow.”

“Great. Good.” Jasper looked around the room. “Where do you want to sleep? You can take the couch, or you can have the bedroom if you want. I don’t really care.”

A series of memories. He and Chloe had bounced around from place to place for a while before Victor hooked them up with an apartment. They were never very comfortable, those one-day homes, partially furnished if at all, but Chloe always minded more than X did.

“I’m used to couch surfing,” X said.

Jasper nodded. “Okay. You can have the couch, then.” He turned, then paused. “We’ll talk tomorrow,” he said after a moment. He walked through another doorway and shut the door behind him.

X stood alone in the middle of the living room. Jasper had said before that he owed him a favor, but he didn’t realize how much X already owed _him_. He’d allowed Chloe to get captured. If something happened to her, he didn’t know how he’d ever be able to make it up to Jasper. They had to move quickly. 

He lay down on the couch and let the weight of the oncoming day sleep wash over him. So much had changed since the last time he’d slept. People were hurt, people were hurting, people were being hurt, because of him.

“I’m sorry,” he said. He wasn’t sure to who, but he had to say it. 

He was hurting, too. He was hurting so much, so much that he couldn’t take it. But he’d make it better. Tomorrow, they’d plan. They’d rescue Chloe, and they’d get to _her._ To Therese. And they’d kill her. No matter what it took.

X gave into the exhaustion, and like every day before, every day since he was Embraced and everything was taken from him, he was dead to the world. Jasper was right, he wasn’t a person. He was a dead thing, a monster. Maybe it was time he started acting more like one. But for now, he slept, and today, he didn’t dream.


End file.
